The paper focuses on the linguistic expressive means of Slovak commercial advertising, manifested at the lexical and syntactic levels. The intertextual and interdiscursive means of commercial advertising, as well as some techniques of argumentation in advertising, are presented as well. An analysis of advertising slogans and texts revealed that the arsenal of devices that make up the language of Slovak commercial advertising is quite extensive. The most typical lexical and syntactic devices in Slovak commercial advertising include pseudo-terms, evaluative vocabulary, superlatives, familiar diminutives, fashionable words, neologisms, juxtaposition, sequential parcellation of utterances, syntactic parallelism, beneficiary constructions, and adverbial clauses of cause and purpose. The most typical intertextual and interdiscursive means of Slovak commercial advertising include quotations that refer to cultural realities (stereotypes) that are understandable to an average recipient, the actualization of a well-known expression, a constant epithet, and the phenomenon of an advertising campaign. Argumentation in Slovak commercial advertising is represented by a direct call to purchase a product or service (called a “hard sell”), strategies of persuasion and seduction, and a combination of these. An analysis of Slovak commercial advertising revealed a fairly wide variety of expressive means and confirmed its communicative-pragmatic focus with a predominantly persuasive function (the primary goal of advertising texts is to convince the recipient of the need to purchase the product). This particular characteristic of commercial advertising determines the choice of linguistic (syntactic, lexical, etc.) means that enhance the impact on the recipient’s mental sphere.
The proposed study is part of a research project devoted to Jewish texts in Latgale (the southeastern part of Latvia) in the 1970s–1990s. The project is based on a field research method involving partially structured interviews. The study of Jewish identity in the late Soviet period is innovative. This article presents a hybrid model of Jewish identity, reconstructed through the segmentation of interview data. The interview questions were designed to reveal clusters of individual memories: the preservation of family traditions, classmates’ perceptions of Jews, the influence of literary and cinematic texts, mass culture, and perceptions of Israel. Memories from the 1970s–1980s demonstrate the hybridization of the identity model, shaped by the interplay of public ideology of internationalism, awareness of specific ethnic belonging, and various forms of antisemitism. The 1990s are identified as a turning point, revealing the emergence of a new Jewish identity. The trajectory of Jewish identity undergoes a significant change: rejection gives way to a sense of belonging, yet this awareness manifests in various hybrid forms.
The research object of this article is the new novel by Alexei Polyarinov, Cadavers (2024), which has sparked much debate. While critical reviews focus on defining the genre and intertextual connections of the text, this article analyses a key element in the artistic world of Polyarinov’s novel – the category of border, which is introduced in its titular image and realised at different levels of the artistic system, explaining its multi-layered nature and raising the issue of identity as the (in)ability to belong to a particular group. The border has structure-forming significance for the main categories of the artistic world of the text: space, time, and man. On an ontological level, the central image of the novel – the cadaver – is a sign of the disruption of the borders between the world of the living and the dead, a catastrophic shift in the very foundations of existence. In the spatial paradigm, the breakdown of the world order manifests itself in signs of degradation (political, economical, ecological, social, and interethnic) in cities of southern Russia. A slight temporal shift (the novel is set in 2027) places all the depicted events in a dystopian world of ongoing catastrophe, isolated from reality, which enables a detailed examination of the logic of its internal existence. Finally, the forms of existence in such a world are demonstrated by the character system. While the majority prefers to ignore the trouble, the disruption of normal life is felt most acutely by people with distorted identities who cannot find their place in the world, remaining frozen in an uncertain position ‘in between’. Thus, the catastrophic nature of the experience depicted by the author becomes not only a theme, but also a central feature of the novel’s artistic world.
The subject of this article is the place of poetry in the literary output of Nina Berberova (1901–1993), a representative of the first wave of Russian emigration, author of short stories and novels about the life of the Russian diaspora, biographical prose (including works about A. Blok, A. Borodin and P. Tchaikovsky) and the famous autobiography The italics are mine (1969). Her poems have been pushed into the background of readers’ interests and academic reflection by her prose; they are less well known and have not yet been the subject of separate literary studies in Poland. Recognising this gap in research on Berberova’s work, I reflect on the reasons for the marginalisation of her poetry. I also attempt to determine its place in Berberova’s oeuvre based on her creative biography and the way it is highlighted in her autobiography. Both the facts from Berberova’s life and their presentation in her autobiography prove that poetry was an important part of her literary legacy and also crucial factor in shaping her identity. This article serves as an introduction to further research on Berberowa’s poetry, including an analysis of her poems.
With the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, more precisely since February 2022, the Russian-speaking world has changed. Europe has witnessed a kind of cancellation of Russian culture; art has been divided into “ours” and “not ours”. Some authors have left Russia, while others have stayed. In this article, we will discuss the literary activity of Viktor Yerofeyev in this new wartime context. In the work of this pioneer of Russian postmodernism we can observe strong journalistic tendencies. Yerofeyev actively collaborates with European magazines (mainly in Germany, France, and Serbia) and writes about contemporary life in Russia (e.g. in the articles Time of denunciations and Insane Russia), his understanding of the war (The metaphysical impasse of the Russo-Ukrainian war; The end of the war is just around the corner; Putin’s perestroika sweeps everything away), as well as about his life abroad (articles Kafka’s absurdity in Deutsche Bank and Escape from the mortuary). In addition to his journalistic work, Yerofeyev continues his literary career as a compiler and one of the authors of the almanac Coming out. In this paper, we will focus on this almanac, considering it a genuine testimony to the active state of Russian literature today.
